


memories sing from your dream

by serulean



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game), enstars
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Vignettes, ish???, my heart is so so weak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 23:56:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9572561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serulean/pseuds/serulean
Summary: “So, tell me more, Sena! What does the most beautiful moment in your life sound like?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> hugely based from [lionheart](https://maluridae.dreamwidth.org/38797.html); the [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZsXcc_tC-o) i’m listening to while crying over izuleo
> 
> here's to the hearts that ached after lionheart

**i.**

 

The after-class hours are measured by Leo’s notes.

 

Rhythmic humming and tapping that transforms the room into an entirely different time and place. Today, it’s somewhere slow and melancholic: falling leaves on a pathway memorized by heart; laughter by the riverbanks under a firework-blushed sky; the golden wash of sunlight behind closed eyelids on a Sunday morning.

 

Or, perhaps, that soft tug someone feels when they’re called beautiful for the first time. A memory from long ago that peels itself into remembrance.

 

This is Leo’s music: enchanting. A magic he creates. To Izumi, it’s something sticky. Leo unearths old-forgotten feelings and gives it a name, a shape,  _another chance_  and it echoes loudly. The heart always remembers. Bookmarks and pressed-flowers. Letters tucked away and songs that are made just for someone. Songs that stick to you forever.

 

Once upon a time, Izumi tried to ignore moments like these. Now he knows the weight of each notes, knows what absence feels like and so he lets the feeling of each second burn into his skin and stick for as long as it can.

 

 

 _Then_ —suddenly, the spell disappears:

 

“Mm, tell me something, Sena!” Leo’s voice pierces through the air, music sheets messily left scattered on the floor.

 

“What?” Izumi says, sharply.

 

“Something! Wahahaha!” Leo comes closer, his eyes twinkling with an image only he can see. “Tell me anything!”

 

“You have to be more specific than that, you know? I don’t know how your mind works. You’re sooo~ annoying.”

 

“Don’t be like that Sena. Come, come. Tell me. Hit me with your wondrous tales! What does your dream taste like? How do you touch the night sky? Do the colors smell the way they look? Have you ever seen an alien? I did once, uchuuu. They are more than what fantasies ever make them out to be. Ahh, ahh~ My inspiration. So, tell me more, Sena! What does the most beautiful moment in your life sound like?”

 

 _Ah._  He pauses, pondering at the silly question. And then, snapping himself into alertness, wondering why he’s thinking about it deeply. It’s Ou-sama. His words never make sense, but.

 

A lilt, a tune. He  _feels_.

 

Maybe it’s an effect of Leo’s music. Maybe it’s been in him, all along. Ever since, he’s been selective with his words, unable to hold out in the open the ephemeral—fleeting, ever-changing,  _scary_ —things like emotions. It always slips out of his hand before he can memorize its texture, before he can learn to trust it. He’s never been honest, but.

 

He opens his mouth as if to speak. And stops, gulps, starts again…

 

“You’re not making any sense, idiot,” he settles for a simple answer as the rest of Knights shuffle inside the practice room.

 

 

**ii.**

 

What Izumi doesn’t say is this: his most beautiful moment in life sounded like Leo’s voice in the backdrop of spilling afternoon lights. It comes in iridescent bursts, a wakeful laugh and a whimsical timbre that leaves a trail of hazy afterglow in Izumi’s chest.

 

 

**iii.**

 

Izumi doesn’t say  _I love you_  or  _I like you_  or touches and treasures people in careful, tender ways.

 

Izumi is … Izumi.

 

He’s nothing like Leo, with the boy’s easy way of embracing emotions and wrapping them around himself almost like an intangible crown and cape. The only thing their King wears is his heart, as enigmatic it is to other people’s eyes, sewn along all the layers of his poetic foolish words.

 

(—and so, when he broke, he shattered louder and harder; longer and deeper, enough to bruise his own soul)

 

Leo is his King. Then and now.

 

Even if ‘now’, Izumi only have these: an empty throne and an iPod longing for new melodies.

 

Izumi is … Izumi.

 

A Knight. Then and now.

 

He doesn’t say  _I love you_  or  _I like you_  or touches and treasures people in careful, tender ways.

 

He loves with his edges, whispers a sharp-cutting lullaby to a place someone important—once, twice, thrice, too many enough to count—tried to protect. He’s a drawn sword against others and a hope for something else, more than victory. Two words he won’t say out loud.

 

He doesn’t offer his heart, he doesn’t try to mend what’s broken, he does what he knows.

 

He waits.

 

**iv.**

 

In his early years as an idol, Izumi shines in a different way. A pretty face, a graceful pose and  _only_  these. Shines less, if he admits the truth.

 

Despite all the gritty brashness, cloudy thoughts and curled fist that digs crescents into his palms as he sings off-key, Izumi is unwavering; far from being the best idol but as driven as everyone else. And so, he practices endlessly.

 

It—that moment—happens like this: on a day Izumi is more doubtful than unwavering.

 

He hears the laugh first.

 

“Wahahaha! Your face is beautiful but your singing is way outta tune! Hilarious!” Tsukinaga Leo comes like drumfire, sweeps the room clean with his presence. Confident and sure. Someone you can’t tune out.

 

Izumi is more shocked than insulted, then furious than calm and he’s—

 

“But your voice  _is_  pretty, so I’m sure you’ll get better with some training! I love it!” Leo follows, beaming.

 

This is Leo, star-bright with his music-hands. Someone who breathes in the world and breathes out galaxies. Someone who always sees  _something_  out of nothing. (Sees  _something_  out of him)

 

—And Izumi is, Izumi is, Izumi is, his heart pulses with something more.

 

A tug, hushed and serene. Afterwards, a shift. Quaking within him, one that divides his life to ‘before’ and ‘after’. Because Izumi have always been beautiful in the way ghostlights are: hollow and untouchable.  _Empty_. Never touches enough to make you feel.

 

(And, maybe, this is why he has hated heat and warmth since long ago.)

 

But right here — in this room painted warm and golden, as the song keeps on going and going, with this stupid King’s voice overpowering everything — he knows, he knows, he found it. What he’s been yearning for all along. And for the first time, he feels truly beautiful.

 

He learns, too, how powerful a touch can be.

 

(More powerful than him throwing a chair to… not just this, but ‘his’ stupid King.)

 

 

**v.**

 

Because what makes it unforgettable are the fractions that make it whole.

 

Leo’s voice—in the morning as he enters the wrong room and greets the wrong class and Izumi’s veins nearly pop as he points where 3-B is and snaps a loud  _Idiot_ ; through the phone as he raves, all breathy with a child-like excitement,  _Sena! I made a new masterpiece!_  and Izumi is wide awake, counting down the hours until tomorrow; at a photoshoot, as he leans on the railing, whispers,  _Your smile is really pretty_  and laughs his laugh and Izumi huffs, endearingly, and replies back,  _I know;_ when he says Izumi’s name like it’s followed by an exclamation mark, like it’s a feeling all on its own; at the studio where he lies down and talks about music and Mozart, how much he loves Knights and how they’re going to take over the world; across the room, when their voices overlap and harmonizes, like they’re dots drawn to connect this way, and Izumi feels happy like this, flaring sunburst that leaves him blinking… and brimming and smiling (as tiny and hidden as someone like him can make); here, they are together; on their way home, along the beach,  _together together together_

 

 

**vi.**

 

(An ache he can’t name)

 

 _Come back_ , he hopes…

 

Repeatedly, each time he comes into a practice room missing with one member. A song missing its melody.

 

 

**vii.**

 

_“Remember how to get to the place. Don’t get lost this time. Don’t forget, okay?”_

 

_“Mmmm.”_

 

_“You’re such a handful. Hey, are you listening to me?”_

 

_“You’re really like a mom, Sena. I won’t forget.”_

 

_Leo grins wider. Izumi scowls, unbelieving._

 

_“Even if I do, something in me will always remember. Maybe my feet or my hands. My fingers. Oh! Maybe my hair. Like dousing rods. Trust in your King, okay. I’ll always come back.” This time, he laughs. Bewildering. Bright._

 

 

**viii.**

 

Just like how Izumi’s first memory of Leo is made up of his laughter.  _Wa ha ha ha_ , it rolls and comes and goes like waves.

 

When Leo disappeared, Izumi thinks his King is just a little lost. A kitten with its head in the clouds, straying off the path and, for the moment, forgetting how to return. Not this lost… like—like a lion without its heart.

 

He recalls something his hero-dreamer of a classmate once told him:  _When it’s dark, it’s always the sound that guides you._

 

Izumi closes his eyes and tries to follow the sound, hoping it’ll lead him to where that person is. He catches floating dustlights, instead.

 

**ix.**

 

And here is Izumi, the boy who waited.

 

Warm and beautiful. Moving. Like the song that was made for him.

 

A substitute leader. A knight waiting for its king.

 

Determined.

 

Desperate.

 

 

_Waiting, waiting, waiting—_

 

**x.**

 

Until he hears the first whispers:  _The King is back, I saw Tsukinaga Leo roaming around the school grounds, Was it really him? Do you think he’s finally staying?, The Knights Leader have returned…_

 

Until he sees the silhouettes of oranges and flames.

 

Until he realizes that Leo is back but not right. Not his King. Not  _his_  Leo. Because Izumi is all about permanence, not the changes — the coming and going, the hello’s and goodbye’s, whole and broken, good and bad. The things he love, he thinks, should be protected and treasured. Tied with a good memory. A piece of an unmoving eternity that gives him happiness. Izumi reaches out for all the things he loved but only sees the tail ends of it. He read once, from Yuu-kun’s book, when they were younger and closer, that comet tails always point away from the sun and he thinks, maybe, that’s why it hurts. While everyone is moving forward, somewhere brighter and better, he remains behind, attached to the past, clinging to the remnants.

 

Until it comes—a wave of good noise.

 

Leo’s laugh, Leo’s voice, Leo’s songs. Everything still makes him feel a lot, in all its familiar ways. And he wrestles in his mind how some things can become different yet still the same. And that it’s okay. These are fingerprint-facts that he learns, slowly and messily. Dawn unfurling in someone's heart makes them more beautiful. Because Izumi is not made up of ghostlights anymore and this time, he grows too. Along everyone else.

 

Until the waiting finally stops.

 

Until he sees the musical notes drawn on the walls of their practice room, until he sees that smile—big, sunny and beautiful—wrinkled with new stories to tell, better than all the old ones it held.

 

Until Leo says, “Let’s sing a song together, Sena!”

 

Until Izumi hmph’s and shrugs, “Well, I guess I can do that. But you have to clean the walls after.”

 

They both smile.

 

**xi.**

 

_“I’m back, Sena!”_

 

_This, for eternity. This is enough._

 

**xii.**

 

On their way home, it’s Izumi who breaks the spell:

 

“Thank you,” he says. Softly. Almost a flutter in the air.

 

But Leo hears, stops drawing imaginary notes, looks at him and asks, “For what?”

 

And when Izumi walks forward, his steps are lighter and kinder. Happier. He’s not waiting anymore. He’s living. They’re living. And they’ve got the rest of the world—

 

Leo walks in step beside him with a smile. Together.

 

This time he finally says it:

 

“For the most beautiful moment in my life.”

 

 

-

 

**Author's Note:**

> title from the poem ‘fairy tales’ by shu ting;
> 
> thanks for reading!! ★


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